About one marriage in three in Australia ends in divorce.
And remarriage after divorce is now common 'down-under'. For Catholics
'remarriage' is possible only if the first marriage was not valid. The failure of second marriages
heaps tragedy upon tragedy for all those concerned. This fifth article in our popular series by
Fr. John Hosie, SM, looks at the possibility that a marriage can die. And consequences for practising Catholics.

We have been looking at the
situation of Catholics remarried without an annulment of
a first marriage which they sincerely
believe to be invalid. We have seen
that a most authoritative church
body has clearly indicated circumstances
in which they may make a
decision in good conscience and
receive Holy Communion.

What is the situation of someone
who believes that a first marriage
was valid or is at least uncertain?

Belief is not proof

The first thing to note is that
belief that a marriage was valid is
not proof that it was valid. I have
known divorced Catholics who
believed that their marriage was
valid, yet the former spouse applied
for an annulment which was
granted.

I am not implying that the tribunal
decision was wrong: quite the
reverse. I have always found our
tribunals scrupulously careful in
collecting solid evidence before
granting annulments. If anything,
they may be more careful than
necessary in this regard. What I am
saying is that the decision of the
legally conservative tribunal clearly
shows that a spouse was incorrect
in believing that the marriage was
valid.

People who discuss seeking
annulments will often say of a first
marriage, "I always thought it was
valid". Their conviction- indicates
no more than ,that they were
genuine in pronouncing the vows
of marriage, and sincerely intended
that it would be until death.

However, though it may be
unfounded, the belief of an average
person that a first marriage was
valid can make the difficulties in
coming to a good conscience decision
seem immense. This is especially so
when they have been brought up
to consider that it was not right for
a Catholic to make important moral
decisions alone: they had to obtain
permission from a priest.
Yet now they are supposed to take responsibility
for this major decision. They
need informed help. It is difficult
to find.

Not easy to understand

The annulment process is not
easy to understand. In working
among the divorced, I speak to
many Catholics who have received
annulments, who say to me, "I still
can't say I really understand it."
Many priests are not well informed
about the the current practices
of the tribunal. How much more
difficult it is, then, for lay
people to feel sure of their grounds for
believing that a first marriage (their
own or that of their spouse) would
be able to be declared invalid, if it
could be submitted to the tribunal
and witnesses were available. Very
many feel uncertain.

If such Catholics are to learn
whether they might be entitled to
receive the Eucharist, there is
another concept which needs to be
explained here. It concerns the
general law of the church and what
we might call the objective status of
a Catholic who is remarried without
an annulment of a previous marriage
(their own, or that of their
partner), as contrasted with the
question of whether they are in sin
at a personal level. Since it is an
unfamiliar idea for us who are
accustomed to different traditions
based on English law, let us try to
explain it.

Two levels

Church law may operate at two
levels: one - the general level and
the second is the level of personal
conscience. The presumption
of law, for instance, is at the general
level, and we saw from the words
of Pope John Paul II that the
presumption of law regarding marriage
still stands: a marriage taking
place according to the rules is
presumed to be valid - unless or
until an annulment is granted. His
words indicate that the church
unequivocally stands by its teaching
that marriage, of its nature, is
indissoluble.

But while he urged people to seek
annulments, John Paul carefully did
not say that there are no circumstances
under which a person could
receive Holy Communion without
an annulment, and he spoke compassionately
to Catholics who are
divorced and remarried.

When the Pope speaks officially
in public, and in documents, it is
usually at the objective, general
level. Nevertheless, he can also
speak at the personal level. Thus,
he sometimes hears confessions at
the Vatican: there he is able to speak
at the second level of personal
conscience without being misunderstood.
This could include a
discussion about the right of an
individual remarried Catholic to
receive Holy Communion, scandal
being avoided.

The different approach of church
law may be illustrated by an example.
Technically, the church does
not recognize divorce. But, as we
noted, in Australia the church
requires Catholics to obtain a
divorce before they can begin an
annulment application. From the
traditions of civil law in this country,
we might think that the people
concerned are being asked to
"break" the church's general law on
the indissolubility of marriage, to
enable the annulment case to proceed.
Yet in church law this is not
the case: they are certainly not seen
as being in a bad state of conscience.

Similarly, many people remarry
(e.g. in a civil ceremony) before they
obtain an annulment of a previous
marriage. Until the annulment is
granted their "objective status"
does not fulfil those teachings of the
church. However, it is interesting
that once an annulment has been
granted, and the remarriage is
"blessed", the church regards the
second marriage as having begun,
not with the Catholic church blessing,
but when they pronounced
their vows civilly - even though at
that time their objective status was
seen as not fulfilling the general law
of the church about indissolubility.

An understanding of these concepts
is relevant for many Catholics
concerned about whether to apply
for a divorce or worrying because
they remarried before annulment
procedures were completed.

Return not possible

A separate point which deserves
to be noted is that the Holy Father
did not express a rule that divorced
people should go back to a former
spouse. In the vast proportion of
cases, reconciliation is a question
which related to the time before the
final step of divorcing. For most
people there is simply no possibility
of returning to the former spouse
(especially if there is a second
marriage). There may be obligations
to a new spouse, and possibly
children to the second marriage to
consider.

In fact, any divorced person who
carries an inner belief that the
marriage will somehow revive may
be in a state of mind that is very
unhealthy, and damaging to their
day-to-day life. I can recall a
woman, divorced eight years,
whose ex-husband had remarried
and had a child in the new marriage.
He virtually never contacted the
children of his first marriage.

Something about the way she
spoke about him made me ask: "Do
you think that one day, the phone
will ring, and he will say, 'I'm sorry.
I was wrong. Can I come back?"'
She paused, and then said reluctantly,
"Well. . . not soon."

Not facing reality

Retaining such a hope in the
circumstances meant that she was
not facing reality. It would be tragic
indeed if she believed that she was
being in some way "more Catholic"
by refusing to recognize that the
marriage was over. I wondered
whether the very sad refusal of her
former husband to contact his
children had been affected by an
awareness that she was likely to
regard such contacts as "proof" that
the failed marriage was going to
start again.

The Beginning Experience, the
Catholic program to help people
come to terms with the end of a
marriage sees the process of recovery
of a person from the grief at the
end of a marriage in terms of "Death
and Resurrection". A person locked
into impossible hopes of the revival
of a marriage which has ended is
in an unhealthy "spiritual death":
lost, dead and without hope for the
future. By closing the door on the
painful past, they can begin to live
again, and look to the future with
renewed hope and confidence.

There were times when people in
a second marriage, without an
annulment, were described as "living
in sin", or were specifically
accused of being in an adulterous
union.

Adultery?

Such terms imply that the previous
marriage in some way still
exists, and that the rights of a former
partner are being transgressed by
the new marriage. They more probably
relate to earlier definitions of
marriage as a contract for the sexual
generation of children. The New
Code of Canon Law, which is based
on Vatican II, defines marriage as
a convenant by which a man and
woman establish between them a
"partnership of the whole of life"
(Canon 1055) The qualities of
marriage emphasized by this and
other recent official church statements,
are mutual love and faithfulness,
rather than rights to sexual
actions.

Such principles are the basis on
which a number of theologians
argue that a marriage can die. If two
people are divorced, if the obligations
arising from the marriage are
discharged, and each is living a new
life in a second marriage, these
writers say that it is meaningless to
speak of the new union as "adulterous"
as if some rights of the
previous spouse were being
infringed: the former marriage, they
suggest, is dead.

Unforgivable sin?

Time and again divorced Catholics
ask: "Is divorce the unforgivable
sin?" Unless we are making a new
set of criteria for sin and forgiveness,
the answer has to be No, divorce
is not the unforgivable sin.

It is because the church does not
accept the notion of "unforgivable
sin" that the clear distinction is
always made, at the highest level
of teaching authority in the church,
between something which is, or is
not personally sinful, and the discrepancy
which may exist with the
"objective status" of a person's
situation in general church law.

Recent figures indicate that only
three per cent of marriages in
Australia, in which at least one
partner is divorced, take place in the
Catholic church (i.e. with an annulment).
This seems to clearly show
that for all the church's emphasis
on urging Catholics to apply for
annulments, the divorced Catholics
who do in fact approach the tribunal are only a tiny minority. The
tribunals have heavy backlogs of
cases. If the numbers of applications
for annulments rose greatly, the
tribunals would be hopelessly
clogged.

One reason which deters many
Catholics from waiting until an
annulment is granted, before entering
a second marriage, is the length
of time tribunal processes in Australia
usually take. Few people
contemplating remarriage are under
30 years of age, and for a woman,
the suggestion that she should wait
for what may turn out to be several
years can be a cause of great anxiety
if there is any hope of children from
the remarriage.

speeding the process

It is encouraging that the 1983
New Code of Canon Law gave guidelines
to shorten the length of time
taken to handle cases. In Australia,
despite improvement, we are still
well behind in this regard. In 1986
John Paul II urged the Roman
marriage tribunal to speed up its
handling of cases.

Unfortunately, to speed up the
handling of cases would require a
huge channelling of church resources
into tribunal work. The need
would be even greater if there were
big numbers of new applications.
Many would question the church's
priorities if it redirected its finances
in this way.

If the Catholic church is to be true
to its founder, it bears a grave
responsibility to help marriages
succeed. It needs to offer marriage
preparation which is of excellent
standard. It should offer counselling
to help those whose marriages are
in trouble. These responsibilities are
taken seriously in very many
dioceses.

Compassion, help, education

But the church bears an equally
grave responsibility to reach out
with compassion and help to people
whose marriages have ended, and
to those who enter second marriages.
In the latter instance, apart
from offering the work of marriage
tribunals, few dioceses I know of
take these responsibilities with any
seriousness at all.

If these responsibilities are taken
seriously, an improvement in the
education of Catholics in such
matters is needed. Why do so many
believe that divorce is a sin? Why
do people question the entire
annulment process? Why do so
many assume that any remarried
Catholics who receive Holy Communion
must be in bad conscience?
There has been a failure to offer
accurate knowledge in these areas.
Even where a marriage has occurred
without an annulment, there
may be sound reasons, approved by
the church, why a person can
continue to attend the sacraments,
if scandal is avoided (and scandal
is not to be presumed). Very few
Catholics indeed are aware of this
fact.

The Eucharist is Christ's gift of
himself to strengthen us in our
weakness. Their belief that they are
not allowed in any circumstance to
receive the bread of life is one of
the most serious deprivation which
affect many divorced Catholics.

There is a grave obligation to offer
compassion to the divorced, and
accurate knowledge about divorce
to all Catholics. Sadly, I still hear
from many divorced Catholics of
occasions when they are treated
with disdain or condescension by
other Catholics or have been humiliated
and reduced to tears in the
confessional. Yet the other Catholics
or the priests concerned probably
believed they were being true
to Christ over the matter.

What was the attitude of Christ
towards divorce, and towards the
divorced?